Adolescent depression is one of the public health crises and also at the level of its seriousness due to its prevalence and ability to slow down an individual’s mental growth. Among many psychological interventions, CBT has proved to be beneficial for young people affected by clinical depression. In this paper, we look at a couple of research papers to evaluate if CBT can help treat teenagers who are clinically depressed. Moreover, it highlights the ethical considerations brought up by CBT use and its strategy.
Cognitive behavioral treatment of teenage depression is based on the fact that thoughts, emotions, and behavior are closely related. Therapy is a powerful tool to rebuild people’s lives when undesirable thoughts and behaviors are convertible into good ones. The treatment should focus more on teenagers because their mind is developed to be involved in the self-examination and deep thought tasks in cognitive behavioral therapy (Idsoe et al., 2019). Teens are in the demanding moment of their emotional evolution, and CBT is precisely for them. By developing these skills, they become resilient and develop a problem-solving attitude they need to overcome the depression symptoms.
The study of the distinct applications of TAU and CBT in changing depression for adolescents has proved to have splendid results. Cognitive testing is the other option that Stikkelbroek et al. (2020) identified, and it is more complicated to get confirmation that CBT is the best approach. According to Berg et al. (2020), one primary objective is to enhance the CBT procedures for a better outcome, especially when the treatment peaches. These are the ones that are important to CBT, but there is inadequate research, or those that the success of CBT hinges upon but do not merit the techniques applied by CBT. The study suggests that teenagers with depression consume large amounts of cerebral energy exactly in an extended way as depression causes complex behavior in daily routines through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
One of the main advantages of cognitive behavioral therapy for adolescents with depression is the fact that it is based on reliable research and, above all, it is focused and structured. This cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) aims to turn patients’ lives into ones with increased resilience and self-efficacy and make them change negative thought patterns and behavior. Since it is versatile, it can develop and accommodate a particular age group, like the adolescent, who owns both mental and emotional stages of life. The systematic approach of CBT and its empirical grounds are helpful to both clients and psychologists in creating an open, understandable clinical space and ensuring that the practice remains consistent and reproducible.
However, despite the broad evidence of its effectiveness, CBT also has weak points. For example, CBT may show lower efficacy than alternative interventions; studies reveal that there is no significant symptom reduction difference between CBT and TAU (Mendez et al., 2021). In addition, although CBT is applicable to most teenagers, studies suggest that treatment does not consistently achieve a lowering of symptoms to the clinical level (Walter et al., 2021). The limitation of CBT as a therapeutic tool is that CBT’s effectiveness is restricted by the complexity of the biopsychological mechanisms underlying clinical presentations.
One ethical problem with CBT for teens with depression is that the clients have to understand the intervention and agree to it fully. The disaster affects students most at a highly vulnerable age. The depression scores in CBT and Treatment as Usual (TAU) groups turned without a difference. Thus, informing clients and their caregivers of prior treatment options and outcomes is critical. To treat their children properly with the aid of TAU, teenagers and their families must first figure out if CBT is more efficacious than TAU. Even though not every kid showed improvement below clinical cut-offs, the ethical concept of goodwill requires continuous efforts to increase the efficacy of CBT interventions because the TAU and CBT were beneficial to kids with and without therapy.
The prevalent utilization of Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT), where one accesses the internet for treatment, brings a new ethical concern around data privacy and sensitive information handling. Berg et al. (2020) introduced a new tool that categorized ICBT attenuation and displays youth therapy’s direction in public settings. Since ICBT offers flexibility and convenience, general questions regarding the confidentiality of clients and safe communication through the network are raised. The ethical considerations in ICBT should be developed to guarantee the safety of children as well as awareness of all the stakeholders about the multidimensionality and complications of interpersonal cognitive-behavioral therapy.
To sum up, results indicate that although CBT has long been a standard treatment for adolescent depression, it is not as effective as TAU; therefore, therapy modalities should constantly be redefined. Ethical issues like digital privacy and informed consent should be resolved when dealing with online CBT. Future studies should consider enhancing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to suit adolescents’ different needs and devise new methods that guarantee the ethical well-being required in digital treatment.
Berg, M., Andersson, G., & Rozental, A. (2020). Knowledge About Treatment, Anxiety, and Depression in Association With Internet-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents: Development and Initial Evaluation of a New Test. SAGE Open, 10(1), 215824401989909. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019899095
Idsoe, T., Keles, S., Olseth, A. R., & Ogden, T. (2019). Cognitive behavioral treatment for depressed adolescents: results from a cluster randomized controlled trial of a group course. BMC Psychiatry, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2134-3
Méndez, J., Sánchez-Hernández, Ó., Garber, J., Espada, J. P., & Orgilés, M. (2021). Psychological Treatments for Depression in Adolescents: More Than Three Decades Later. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(9), 4600. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18094600
Stikkelbroek, Y., Vink, G., Nauta, M. H., Bottelier, M. A., Vet, L. J. J., Lont, C. M., van Baar, A. L., & Bodden, D. H. M. (2020). Effectiveness and moderators of individual cognitive behavioral therapy versus treatment as usual in clinically depressed adolescents: a randomized controlled trial. Scientific Reports, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71160-1
Walter, D., Buschsieweke, J., Dachs, L., Goletz, H., Goertz-Dorten, A., Kinnen, C., Perri, D., Rademacher, C., Schuermann, S., Viefhaus, P., Woitecki, K., Metternich-Kaizman, T. W., von Wirth, E., & Doepfner, M. (2021). Effectiveness of usual-care cognitive-behavioral therapy for adolescents with depressive disorders rated by parents and patients – an observational study. BMC Psychiatry, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03404-x